Book Review: 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You by Vicki Grant

36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You

Author: Vicki Grant

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Release date: 25 October 2017

R.R.P: $19.99

                                          

Two random strangers. Thirty-six questions to make them fall in love. 

Hildy and Paul each have their own reasons for taking part in the psychology study (in Paul's case it is the $40, in Hildy's the reasons are significantly more complex). The study poses the simple question: Can love be engineered between two random strangers?

Hildy and Paul must ask each other 36 questions, ranging from "What is your most terrible memory?" to "When did you last sing to yourself?" By the time Hildy and Paul have made it to the end of the questionnaire, they've laughed and cried and lied and thrown things and run away and come back again. They've also each discovered the painful secret the other was trying so hard to hide. But have they fallen in love? 

My review

Thoughts on the book: 36 Questions That Changed my Mind About You is one of the latest new YA books being released by Hot Key books. It's told from the POV of Hildy, a young girl who just learnt a big secret about her family and is struggling with not only how to deal with it but also the. Hanged that come along with it. Hildy is not your typical perfectly hot mad up girl that drives boys crazy, she defiantly has her faults which we learn throughout the story. The story is centred around a physiological survey that Hildy has signed up for where she will be partnered up with someone and they have to answer 36 questions and at the end stare into each other's eyes for 4 minutes in silence and at the end decide is a connection has been made or not based on these processes. Hildy gets paired upwith Paul, who unlike Hildy who is doing the survey for scientific purposes, has no idea what the survey actually entails or even what it's for he just wants the $40 that he was promised he would receive at the end. Upon starting the survey it's clear that Hildy is way more invested in the whole concept than what Paul is, which causes Hildy to throw a very expensive fish at Paul and leave with 22 questions still to go. Will Paul and Hildy finish the survey and make an everlasting conncection or was this duo doomed from the start?

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of 36 Questions that Changed my Mind About You and dove straight into it. From what I had read the book was about it sounded right up my ally and the ARC cover looked amazing with all of the questions written in different fonts, colours and sizes. To be honest I liked this cover more than the final cover which seems to be happening a lot lately. But unfortunately my expectations seemed to be a bit too high this time and I was let down a bit. 

I liked Hildy as our main character. She was very open about who she was and what she wanted in life and you can tell that she cares a lot about her friends and family, especially her youngest brother Gabe. Her answers to the questions being asked were mostly always long and thought out and gave us a really good knowledge of her and what was going on in her life. Meanwhile I didn't really like Paul and it was clear that the author was trying to make opposites attract here. He wasn't very forthcoming with the whole answering the questions honestly and in detail he was only there for the money he was promised. He did open up more towards the end but by then it was too little too late for me. The conversations between the two after there walking out were some of my favourite moments in the book especially when they were talking about the puffer fish named Kong and his thoughts on what was going on.

Knowing now that this book was inspired by a 2015 psychological study I'm interested to read it and see what results they got with it.

Rating: 3/5